Driving can be a stressful activity. You can get caught in traffic jams, lose a good parking spot, get cut off, or be on the receiving side of a little road rage. While there isn't anything you can do about everyone else on the road, a few changes to your driving habits can make the experience a bit smoother for everyone involved.

We're going to take a look at a few tips you might not know about or you simply may not have thought of, but it's important to remember that obeying basic safety laws is the number one way to make driving more enjoyable and efficient for everyone else. This means using your blinkers when turning, not opening your door into oncoming traffic, and everything else you learned in Driver's Ed.

Use Cruise Control and Create Merge Zones on the Highway

Highway driving can turn to highway sitting in a matter of seconds when you hit a traffic jam. While some are caused by an accident and there's not much you can do about it, others are caused by drivers simply not following the rules of the road. Thankfully, a few small changes to your typical highway driving can make the experience better.

Use Cruise Control: Driving at an erratic speed can cause accidents and traffic jams, but research has shown that using cruise control on the highway can reduce both. If even just a small percentage of drivers use cruise control, it maintains the speed and flow of the traffic for everyone. Just remember to turn it off when passing so you don't create a congestion behind you.

Create Merge Zones and Move Over in a Timely Manner: One for the major causes of traffic jams is a lane coming to an end. One simple solution if you're the one driving in the lane being merged into is to move over a lane if you can to help the merging traffic have a place to go. Another option to slowly accumulate a large space in front of you for the traffic to move into. If you leave the space ahead of time, the cars merging in will have a place to slide into and the traffic won't slow down. It's thought that if only a few cars in a traffic jam line do this, it will increase the overall flow of traffic. According to traffic wave researcher Bill Beaty, it's a simple four-part process:

Maintain a large space ahead of your car.

Encourage one, two, even three cars to merge ahead of you.

If traffic slows to a complete stop, keep two car-lengths of space open ahead of you.

Know What Lane You Need to Be In, How to Parallel Park, and When It's Your Turn at a Four-Way Stop in the City

Even after you get used to city driving, it's still a confusing place to drive. Cars randomly pull into parallel parking spots, nobody seems to know the correct order at a four-way stop, and everyone seems to forget when and where they plan on turning. Knowing what you're doing and where you're going is an easy way to improve the flow of traffic for others, so lets look at some of the basic rules you can follow to keep your driving from getting too erratic.

Know Which Lane to Be In: In nearly every major city the odd street addresses are one on side and the even on the other. Knowing which is which means you will always know which lane to be in when looking for an address without consulting a GPS. It also means you get in the correct lane early and stay there so people aren't slowing down around you while you're changing lanes.

Observe Good Parallel Parking Etiquette: Getting good at parallel parking if you live or visit the city often is a must and we've highlighted the ways to do so in the past. Even if you're skilled at parallel parking, it's easy to get panicked when a line of cars is behind you. To prepare the cars behind you, tap your brakes three times before you get close to the spot to alert them, then turn on your blinker to let them know you're about to park. It doesn't ease traffic, but it at least communicates what you're about to do.

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When to Go at a Four Way Stop Sign: Nobody seems to remember the rules of the four-way stop and when four cars pulls up, it seems to turn into a politeness-battle of people waving you through. While that's nice, it's not efficient. The easy part to remember is that after stopping, the cars go in the order that they came to a stop, but if it's a tie, the person on your right has the right of way. If someone is turning, the car going straight should go first.

The parking lot is one of the places where our stress level can soar through the roof if we're not careful. Tons of people and their cars are stuffed into a tiny lot with no real sense of order, but a couple tips can help make the experience smoother for both you and the other drivers on the road.

Park closer to the exit: The biggest jams usually take place toward the front of the parking lot, near the store because that's where the pedestrian crossing typically is. Productivity blog Productivy501 recommends parking closer to the exit so you can leave without having to jam up the entrance way, get out quicker, and keep out of the way of everyone else.

Quit Stalking and Embrace the Walk: Sweeping the parking lot is not only inefficient for you, it also slows down everyone else. If you're slowly making your way through the stacks and rows in the hunt for a perfect spot, you're slowing down everyone else. Grab the first spot you can safely fit in and walk the rest of the way.